Randi Kaye

CNN already understands why the Family Research Council (FRC) was labeled a "hate group" by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). On Saturday, CNN gave more credibility to the SPLC as anchor Randi Kaye cited the group as a credible source on "hate groups" in the U.S. right after quoting their explanation for the FRC's "hate group" label.

"Statistics show hate groups are on the rise in this country. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 1,000 known hate groups operating in the U.S. last year, and the FBI reported nearly 7,000 hate crimes," reported Kaye during the 10 a.m. hour of CNN Newsroom. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN on Sunday played Pink's "Stupid Girls" before a segment about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's visit to a Chick-fil-A restaurant.

A CNN spokesperson on Monday sent me the following email message regarding this matter:

UPDATE AT END OF POST: CNN responds.

Remember last November when Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was disgracefully greeted with the song "Lyin' A-- B--ch" during her appearance on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon?

On Sunday, Pink's "Stupid Girls" was played before a CNN Sunday Morning piece about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin visiting a Chick-fil-A restaurant to show support for the embattled company (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN host Randi Kaye was eager to provide same-sex marriage supporters with a stately platform on Wednesday afternoon. In her interview of the plaintiffs in the case to overturn California's ban on same-sex marriage (Proposition 8), she gleefully asked them about their wedding plans. Then Kaye teed them up again with this softball question: "Are you considered heroes by those who support same-sex marriage? What are you hearing from people?"

At the end of the interview, the couple invited certain GOP opponents of same-sex marriage over to their house for a conversation on the matter. Kaye promised CNN would cover it and quickly added "And, we'll bring the meal." [Video below the break.]

Once again, CNN aired a coming-out story that could have doubled as a promotional piece for the GLBT community. Anchor Randi Kaye interviewed the openly-gay grandson of televangelist Oral Roberts on Thursday afternoon and she let him explain how he wanted to change conservatives' minds by giving them a "new visual" of gay couples.

Of course, one can wonder if CNN would have interviewed Roberts's grandson after he served two tours in Afghanistan, or after he did mission work in Sudanese villages devastated by violence. But even though her job as a news anchor is to be objective, Kaye admitted to being "really moved" by Randy Roberts Potts' story in a men's magazine, and she beamed when she asked him about his "upcoming marriage." [Video below the break.]

When asked how both parties would handle an ultimate failure to extend the payroll tax cut, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer immediately painted the scenario as a big advantage for the Democrats. “Well it’ll be great ammunition for the Democrats, because they’ll obviously blame the Republicans, especially House Republicans,” Blizter asserted during the 2 p.m. hour of Newsroom.

Blitzer didn’t say how Republicans could use the news to their advantage; he only expounded upon how President Obama and the Democrats would “hammer” Republicans if a deal was not struck. Blitzer noted that Obama’s rising poll numbers could be related to the battle over the tax cut extension.

CNN used an "In Depth" segment on Tuesday to emphasize the diversity among protesters at Occupy Seattle, featuring a rapper, a group of "Raging Grannies," drummers and more. The report during the 12 p.m. hour was one of multiple segments that ran on Tuesday afternoon giving viewers a close-up look at the Wall Street protests.

The sympathetic look at the protesters can be contrasted with CNN's initial coverage of the Tea Parties in 2009, when reporter Susan Roesgen slammed the Chicago Tea Party as "anti-government" and "anti-CNN" and anchor Anderson Cooper smeared the protesters with an obscene label.  [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

During the 1 p.m. hour of Tuesday's Newsroom, CNN's Randi Kaye touted the potential for the "Occupy Wall Street" protests around the country to morph into a "left wing Tea Party." Kaye reported that the group is "gaining momentum" and hosted one of the protestors for a soft interview.

"The scene from Wall Street as the numbers multiply and the message gets louder, it seems the 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters have the potential to grow into a political party, sort of a left wing Tea Party," Kaye hyped. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Attempting to offer a defense of Ed Schultz, CNN's Randi Kaye told guest Howard Kurtz Thursday that "there are mixed interpretations" of the term "slut," which Schultz called conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham Thursday. Kaye also referred to Laura Ingraham's response to Schultz as "biting," proving that she possibly was harder on Ingraham than on tyrant Sadaam Hussein back in 2006.

"Yeah, but you know when you hear the word 'slut' – I mean I hate to even say it on our air, to be honest with you – but there are mixed interpretations about the word," Kaye told Kurtz. The media critic didn't buy it for a second.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

CNN anchor Randi Kaye finished her Tuesday news hour with a giddy monologue praising the newest smoking ban in New York City. The ban, signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in February, took effect Tuesday and outlawed smoking in city parks, public plazas, beaches, and boardwalks.

"Yes, say what you want about Mayor Bloomberg's smoking ban on, oh, about 1700 parks and 14 miles of beaches around New York City, but I think it is a great idea," Kaye gushed, effectively wagging her finger in front of all members of her audience who disagreed with the ban.

(Video below the jump.)

Along with other institutions and people who will be impacted by a government shutdown, CNN spotlighted, throughout the day Thursday, the "grave" plight of museums and parks that may be forced to a "screeching halt" in the "height of tourism season."

CNN devoted its entire 2 p.m. EDT news hour to the possible government shutdown and what its consequences would be. Anchor Randi Kaye began the 2:15 p.m. EDT segment casting the shutdown as a "grave" threat to the U.S. economy and tourism.

"This couldn't come at a worse time," CNN's Kate Bolduan ominously declared during the 10 a.m. EDT news hour. "This is the height of the tourist season for the Smithsonian, for Washington."

CNN correspondent Randi Kaye gushed over the “dynamic duo” of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, whom she heralded as “a powerful duo -- a duo women want on their side.” The two first ladies had made a joint appearance at President Obama’s announcement of the new White House Council for Women and Girls, and Kaye’s report, which aired on Wednesday’s Anderson Cooper 360, made it seem like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Kaye saved her most laudatory language for the two at the conclusion of her report: “Today was a good day to be a woman.”

Host Anderson Cooper introduced Kaye’s segment by labeling the two first ladies as “two of the most visible champions, perhaps, of women’s rights in the country.” A graphic accompanying Cooper on-screen proclaimed the “dynamic duo” of Obama and Clinton. During the rest of the report, another graphic applauded the “Obama-Clinton power duo.”

On Tuesday night’s Campbell Brown show, CNN raised liberal worries about the Bush administration’s plan in the final days to broaden the conscience clause for medical professionals who object to performing abortion and sterilization procedures. But Randi Kaye’s report questioning a Catholic doctor in Virginia for daring to refuse to provide "care" (translation: abortion or contraceptives) to female patients was most notable for its lack of timeliness: the interviews are now more than a year old, first appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 on November 26, 2007. CNN did not disclose to viewers that its story was largely a rerun.

Two segments on CNN’s Election Center program on Monday and Tuesday evenings which aimed to fact-check political ads by the McCain and Obama campaigns were followed by panel discussions in which contributor Roland Martin (on Monday) and senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (on Tuesday) took active roles in denouncing the McCain ads as being filled with "lies" and "falsehoods." Martin accused McCain of "playing in the gutter" and repeating "constant lie after lie." The next day, Toobin stated that "John McCain has told outright falsehoods about Obama and sex education, about the 'Bridge to Nowhere,' about earmarks, about taxes, and the examples we cited in those Obama ads are not even close to the falsehoods that have been said about Obama by the McCain campaign.

Two segments on Tuesday’s Election Center program, which were promoted by host Campbell Brown as having ‘no bias, no bull,’ actually tried to paint Republican vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin as having a "very extreme" and "outside-the-mainstream" viewpoint on environmental issues, since on the issue of global warming, she’s "not one... who would attribute it to being man-made." Brown herself suggested during the second segment that the debate over the cause of global warming was already over [see video at right].

Audio available here

Correspondent Randi Kaye interviewed University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner during the first segment, a report on Palin’s environmental record. She asked, " In a word, if you can sum up Sarah Palin's record on the environment here, what would it be?" Steiner answered, "Abysmal." Anderson Cooper’s blog on CNN.com republished the professor’s September 7 editorial from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in which he railed against Governor Palin: "In addition to her frightening lack of qualification to be vice president (much less president) of the United States, Palin is an evangelical, anti-choice, pro-gun, right-wing conservative who wants creationism taught in schools." When a shorter version of her report aired on Wednesday’s The Situation Room, Kaye added that Steiner "says he’s not a Republican or a Democrat." Despite this clarification, it is clear from his editorial that Steiner is a liberal.

The media's ham-handed attempts at grasping and accurately reporting religious belief are have only been magnified recently in light of the MSM's obsession with Gov. Sarah Palin's prior attendance at Pentecostal churches.

From Randi Kaye's September 9 CNN.com article, "Pastor: GOP may be downplaying Palin's religious beliefs":

Some Pentecostals from Assembly of God also believe in "faith healing" and the "end times" -- a violent upheaval that they believe will deliver Jesus Christ's second coming.

"Our basic belief is that God is God and he knows where history is going and he has a purposeful plan and within the middle of that plan we live in an environment in our world where certain events would take place," says McGraw. "Sarah wasn't taught to look for one particular sign -- a cataclysmic sign. She knew as every Christian does ... that God is sovereign and he is in control."

The language above seems to paint Pentecostals as on the fringe of Christianity, and Kaye's use of dismissive quote marks for "faith healing" and "end times" helps to communicate that to the reader. But the concept of the end times is not a wacky, outside-the-mainstream of Christianity belief. It's essential to the eschatology of all orthodox Christian denominations and rooted in Christian Scripture (from Theopedia.com):

During a report on Tuesday’s “American Morning,” CNN correspondent Randi Kaye detailed how the rejection of an op-ed by John McCain by The New York Times might be part of a wider pattern of media bias for Barack Obama and against John McCain: “Consider this -- network anchors and reporters are following Obama's every move in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last four months, McCain has gone abroad to Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Colombia, and Mexico -- no anchors tagged along. Some networks didn't even send reporters.... According to a group that follows this stuff, Obama gets more than twice as much coverage as McCain on the broadcast networks weekday evening newscasts, 114 minutes compared to just 48. Same goes for the covers of Time and Newsweek.” She joined her CNN colleagues Jack Cafferty and Howard Kurtz in revealing the lopsided coverage of Barack Obama versus John McCain.

On Thursday's "Anderson Cooper 360," CNN's Randi Kaye filed a story in which she promoted gun control as a solution for Philadelphia's crime problems, as she pushed the argument that the city's high rate of gun violence was the result of Pennsylvania state lawmakers voting to loosen gun laws in the 1990s. And, as if criminals would bother to apply for a permit to legally carry a concealed weapon, Kaye further suggested that the availability of concealed carry permits has contributed to the city's problems. Kaye: "In 1995 there were fewer than 800 applications for concealed weapons here. 'Keeping Them Honest,' we checked, and today there are 29,000 permits to carry. And it's against the law for police to ask anyone why they want one. One law enforcement source told me permits to carry are being passed out like candy." A blog posting on the show's Web site based on this story can be seen here. (Transcript follows)